Create high quality content that other people will appreciate, and put it out in the world for free.
513 karma · joined July 17, 2008
Objectivity in storytelling/journalism is a lie.
Stories are ALWAYS biased by what the storyteller chooses to show. It impossible to show everything. So what you choose to show is the bias.
Here’s an example: Is Shenzhen an industrial metropolis, or a green leafy jungle? It’s both.
I tend to make videos about the industrial side of Shenzhen, so I tend to choose footage to match that.
When I go walk in the park, I sometimes feel guilty I’m not showing how beautiful it is. That by not showing this side of Shenzhen, I’m presenting a very lopsided version.
But that’s not what people watch my videos for. They’re interested in the industrial side. I’m also not particularly interested in making videos about parks and beautiful landscapes. So I don’t.
“ And the fact that you admit that you’re afraid of angering CCP members - isn’t that terrifying to you?” Yes, of course it is. Why do you think I’m so careful about what I say and show? What do you expect me to do? Speak publicly about it and risk never being allowed back to China? What could I possibly say that’s not already been said by thousands of others?
Instead, I’m trying to make the most of the opportunity I have to say something unique, that few others are saying, and hopefully bring people closer together, rather than further push them apart. We need more of that in the world right now.
That being said, I’ll be the first to admit my videos are biased.
There’s tons of China bashing in the world. Some of it deserved, a lot of it not. There are a lot of very lazy journalists in the world that follow very old narratives about China because they’re too lazy and overworked to go find new ones.
I could choose to follow these narratives and give viewers what they expect to hear about China. But I think it’s far more interesting and useful to the world to talk about the parts people _haven’t_ heard yet. The parts that I think are cool and amazing and exciting. All of that is real and genuine.
I’m also definitely afraid of angering the CCP gods. I’m also careful to not put anyone in harms way because of something I showed in one of my videos. And I don’t think it’s fair to shit all over a factory who has invited me in as their guest.
I feel like I walk a very fine line with what I show. I think there’s more value to be had by continuing to have access to show an authentic view of what China and Chinese factories are like, even if I can’t always directly comment on it.
The alternative is potentially showing one or two really critical things that are already being covered well by more traditional outlets, and then never being allowed back. Which seems like a huge waste of an opportunity to create some good in the world.
As for factories sponsoring videos, I turn down far more than I accept. Those videos are intended to be about how things are made and how factories work, not reviews or advertisements of a given factory. I could make that same video at a number of factories. They offer to pay to be the factory in shoot it at because it gets them a lot of useful visibility. I insist on having full creative control over the video. The only input they have is what’s confidential that I can’t show on camera (usually just customer designs or logos). If a factory is bad, or makes a bad product, I won’t accept the sponsorship. But I’m not going to go to a factory, sponsored or not, and then badmouth them. That’s rude, and would quickly mean I wouldn’t be invited to other factories to make the educational content I’m so excited to make.
We’ll see. I’m here for the next few weeks. But right now it feels surprisingly like the Shenzhen and China I’ve gotten to know and love, with all the good and the bad.
That being said, whether I want to really double down on a life in Shenzhen is on my mind right now. It’s difficult being a foreigner here, for lots of different reasons. Everything is harder if you’re not a Chinese citizen and don’t have a chinese id card. There’s no path to being allowed to stay in China permanently, so the rug could be pulled out from underneath you at any moment. There’s also just simple quality of life things. It’s harder to eat healthy food here. Shenzhen, like San Francisco, is a place people come to seek their fortune. Which makes it very transient, and a hard place to build long term friendships.
But yeah, so far, my read is that there a lot of what’s said about leaving China because of anti-western feelings is made up for views, and that folks left for other reasons. It’s apparently trendy to bash China right now.
Yeah, that really sucks. There's definitely a lot of pretty apparent white privilege here, which I try to be really aware of and not take unfair advantage of. But it can be tricky to navigate at times.
But I can give you some answers for your second set of questions.
> So what does all that Shentzen parts retail look like when you're building something new?
The markets originally started as wholesale components and tools markets to service the electronics factories in Shenzhen, which make a significant fraction of the worlds electronics, particularly commodity electronics. So it actually mostly caters to people building new things, versus repair. But I didn't show any of that in the video. My understanding is that the cell phone repair markets are comparatively much newer, and obviously cater much less to large scale production of new goods.
> Can you go into those buildings with a bill of materials and come out ready to load your pick and place machine?
Yes, absolutely. There are multiple buildings of distributers that do nothing but sell components on reels to load in pick and place machines. You can even buy a pick and place machine there if you need.
> Can you get boards fabbed one-off while you wait?
Not quite while you wait. There are a bunch of booths in the markets advertising these sorts of services though. I think the fastest on the PCB fab itself (without assembling any components on it) is 12-hour turn time, and that's pushing it a bit. 24-hour turn time expedited but pretty standard, and 3-4 days is generally the non-expedited standard for the board house I've used. Sometimes a bit longer if they're really busy. A courier on a motorcycle will bring it to your door.
> Or is it all about repair and simple mods?
The cell phone markets are mainly about repair/refurbishing and simple mods, as far as I can tell. But I don't fully know - there's still a ton more for me to learn. I still feel like I'm barely scratching the surface here.
So there's just this really different approach of "what can I make myself with the tools I own" versus "what professional services do I have access to, and which of my friends have factories with the right production equipment".
As a result, you see stark difference in quality of initial prototypes.
The flip side is that I think western makers/hackers are more focused on coming up with completely new ideas, with less of a focus on quality of execution, whereas a lot of chinese makers/hackers/manufacturers are more focused on iterative improvement - how can I be really clever to make something cheaper or easier to produce, that looks like a professional product. Both sides are very clever and creative, but focus on different aspects.
And the screen repair booth art is totally legit. As is their workbench organization scheme.
In fact, I almost guarantee this change had multiple people involved, and probably at least several internal discussions.
Source: Used to work on the team responsible for the webserver that serves the Google homepage.
On a more serious note, I think you're probably trying to do customer development, and trying to modify the question people tell you to ask "If you had a magic wand, what would you improve to solve your problem?"
This can be a useful question if you're already talking about a pretty well defined problem space. So, for example, if you were talking about how people deal with all the photos they take on their phones, the magic wand question might yield you things like "I want an easy way to back them up online".
But the way you're asking it is so open ended that you're essentially saying "What app do you want that doesn't exist", which tends to yield nonsense because there's not a concrete enough frame of reference.
Before we hit profitability, I thought "If only we can hit profitability, it will be smooth sailing - all our problems will go away." It's anything but. Two things do change: the type of problem changes (often to bigger, scarier problems), and you start facing more and more problems you can't talk about publicly.
I wish I had heard other entrepreneurs say "It gets harder not easier" when I was in some of my darker times. It would have raised my spirits to know that I wasn't alone in feeling like things kept getting harder when I thought they should keep getting easier.
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Our entire team works remotely. We're very flexible about where and when you work, as long as you ship code, keep systems online, and are reachable by other team members for part of the day. We stay in touch via a team chatroom and weekly team video chats, with impromptu 1-on-1 video chats whenever there's a detailed issue to discuss. To make this work, you'll need to be in a compatible timezone (between PDT(UTC-08) and CET(UTC+1)), and be very fluent writing and speaking english. Like getting out of the house to work? Ask about our mobile internet subsidy:)
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When we talk to prospects, we hear things like "We've been looking for a solution to this problem for the past three weeks. This is EXACTLY what we were looking for". There are tons of leads just waiting for someone to give them a demo and close them, as well as a ton of companies that don't know they want to talk to us yet (we usually come back from conferences with handfuls of business cards to give demos to).
As our first dedicated sales person, there's a huge opportunity waiting for you (and responsibility to match). You'll set the tone for our whole sales organization, and have the opportunity to grow into a very senior management role. You'll be instrumental in helping develop a repeatable, measurable sales process. At the same time, you should be comfortable with being the feet on the street while we ramp up. We have had great luck with attending conferences, sending cold emails, and giving web demos to close new customers.
Our entire team works remotely. We're very flexible about where and when you work, as long as you're hustling, closing deals, and keeping our existing customers happy and paying. Being in somewhere in the bay area is a big bonus, as both founders are here, as are a lot of our customers. We try to get together at least once a week, and meet with our customers in person when we can. We also provide everyone with a 4G LTE wireless access point so you can work from wherever suits your fancy.
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However, an even higher win for me is aliasing search in the same way. I used to find that when I went into my email to look for a particular piece of info I would get so distracted by my inbox that I never ended up completing the task I was originally working on. I've aliased https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/?shva=1#search/<searcht...; to "ms <searchterm>", such that I can type "ms paypal" in my url bar and get all my recent paypal receipts without having to be tempted by my inbox first:)
My only frustration is that gmail is still so damn slow to load. I know they've spent a lot of time trying to make this fast (I spent about 2 years working on reducing latency on Google search), but they're still so far away from where they could be.
I really, really wish gmail loaded the html first, showing my inbox or search or whatever, and then loaded and attached all the javascript later. This could result in search level latencies for the initial load of data for the user to start looking at, even if it took a while longer to be fully interactive.